Meanwhile Akane (Yumiko Shaku), the only female member of the Anti Megalasaurus Force, has to redeem herself after the last run in with Godzilla. Her bad judgment led to a Nissan Pathfinder load of her comrades being squashed under Godzilla's size one-million foot, and she was reassigned to a clerical job. The higher ups in the AMF, however, see her potential and are willing to give her a second chance. In an odd Top Gun style twist, she's given control of Mecha G as the ultimate chance to prove herself. And just in time, too—Mecha G is just about ready for action when the real Godzilla comes back for Round 2. There's a glitch in the software, though, and Mecha Godzilla goes berserk when the real Godzilla's roar triggers a genetic memory in his DNA. Back to the drawing board.

Masaaki Tezuka's Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla is heavy on the exposition and character development for its first act, with some awkward subtitling throughout (though Shaku makes an engaging and earnest Akane). But that's not what any Godzilla movie is about, after all. Happily, this 2K2 version strikes a balance between modern day digital effects and the one thing that every true blue monster movie fan craves; an old fashioned donnybrook between two guys in rubber suits, smashing up a scale model of a Japanese city. The monster vs cybermonster slugfest goes on for a good long time, with each of the behemoths taking a fair share of licks and stomping plenty of buildings flat. Of course, the obvious question is "Why doesn't she just fire up the Absolute Zero ray and finish him off?" But the obvious answer is that it'd end things way too quickly.

The seminal 1954 Toho version of Godzilla, a fairly serious look at the results of human beings' folly and hubris, got the ball rolling and spawned a whole menagerie of giant Japan wreckers: Mothra, Gamera, Gigan, Monster Zero, cute li'l Son of Godzilla, and even the bewildering Smog Monster. American audiences have loved to poke fun at the shoddy production values and flabby latex suits of the principal monsters, but such judgments are misplaced. The monster cycle of movies has a completely different set of signifiers to Japanese audiences, and those cultural markers weren't necessarily meant for Western audiences to understand. Still, everyone loves a good rasslin' match between giant monsters (with plenty of buildings, helicopters and jet planes being knocked to smithereens), and that's something that this updated, modernized, new and improved Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla certainly delivers. The movie's original tagline is Kudakechiru made tatakae! (Fight till it's all smashed up!), which is just about dead on.

By the way, if you're looking for special features on this disc, you're flat out of luck; there aren't any.